EJIL: The Podcast! Episode 44: One Strait, Many Chokepoints: International Law and the New Geopolitics of Energy

The war in the Middle East has plunged the world into yet another crisis. Days are paced by minute-by-minute updates: at first, tragic reports of civilian deaths and incendiary threats from US President Donald Trump, now fragile peace negotiations between the United States and Iran. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has spiked oil prices and placed strategic energy chokepoints at the centre of international debate. But beyond the immediacy of events, this moment offers a window onto something deeper: the international political economy that both shapes this conflict and is reshaped by it. This episode of EJIL: The Podcast! takes the recent energy crisis triggered by the war in the Middle East as its point of departure, zooming in on how international law organises the global energy economy at the centre of this war and zooming out to ask what role it plays in the deeper structural shift now underway. From the old geopolitics of oil and gas, this episode traces a path to a new geopolitics of energy — and perhaps, as one of our guests puts it, from climate law to international energy law.

In this episode, Justina Uriburu (University of Manchester) is joined by Jorge Viñuales (Harold Samuel Chair of Law and Environmental Policy at the University of Cambridge) and Sergio Puig (Chair in International Economic Law at the European University Institute and Evo DeConcini Professor of Law at the University of Arizona).

The materials mentioned in the episode include:

International Energy Agency, World Energy Investment 2026 (Paris 2026)

Jorge Viñuales, The International Law of Energy (Cambridge University Press 2022)

Gregory Shaffer and Sergio Puig, ‘The U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Minerals Partnership in the Wake of Russia’s War of Aggression’ (2025) 119 American Journal of International Law 700

Henry Farrel and Abraham Newman, ‘Weaponized Interdependence: How Global Economic Networks Shape State Coercion’ (2019) 44 International Security 42

Nicolás Perrone, ‘International Law, Acceleration and Desynchronization’ (2025) European Journal of International Law